I just picked up a pair of M22's in the burled walnut. They look perfect in the living room as they work very well with similar colored furniture...they passed the WAF!

I love the sound but noticed that they need a sub to get a fuller range. I don't want anything too large or loud. I'll be using these for light listening when we have company. The EP125 seems to be a good choice for my needs. It'll have to go in a corner, out of sight, to get it past the wife. It may not be the best place but I only want a little bottom end warmth anyway.

When I got them I took them over to a friends so he could hear the M22's. We put them on his HT and demoed some movies which sounded great even at very loud volumes. The clarity that these added in place of his mains was very noticeable. Next we put on some cd's and put them though their paces in stereo. He has a 7.1 Pioneer Elite amp (about 2 years old) and when we pushed it to "-20" volume the amp shut down under overload protection! We were a little confused by this as the movie demo was louder (ie: higher volume setting than the stereo demo).

We tired several different music genre's which produced the same protection shutdown around the "-20 volume". I realize the issue has to be with the amp but why would this issue occur in stereo and not in an HT setting?

I have a similar amp but it's their higher end Elite model (about 4 years old). I haven't tried the M22's on mine and may not if these speaker's would cause the same problem in my amp! Has anybody had a similar problem?

One thing I should mention we checked all the connections for his speakers for correct polarity and tightness. He is using either a 16 or 14 gauge wire in a short 10 ft. run with banana connections at the amp and speakers. The only other thing running is a self powered sub. We didn't run an EQ for the M22's, we set it to "direct" to bypass any EQ settings. Sorry, I don't have the model number for the amp but it is 110 watts per channel. Could the M22's have exceeded his amp's capacity by being more efficient than his current speaker setup?

He still likes the Axiom's and is looking to get their center and new mains for his system. I'm worried that he'll have the same issue in HT if he pushes it too hard!

My setup for the M22's are on an older Technic's amp which I'll probably never push past quarter volume - no worry with overloading! I just want to try and understand what is happening and why the issue occurred in the first place.

The only Axiom speaker that I've heard people having the occasional problem, is the M80 because of it's 4 ohm rating, and that would be with some of the "lower end" avr's. I've not heard of M22s shutting an AVR down, since I've been here(almost 1 1/2 yrs).

_________________________
Half of communication is listening. You can't listen with your mouth.

If there was ever a speaker from Axiom to cause shut downs I always thought it should be the M22s with, as wid mentioned, its very low 2-3ohm impedance at ~4k. I have run my M22s with a few very low end Pioneer receivers and have not had any issues. I have run mine with my Denon 1804, Denon 3808 and my 15 yr old Sony DT915(?), without any issues.

Just to note that you can get the M22s to sound 'fuller' by running a little bass boost in the settings, about 2-4 db works very well.

Zute, as I started to read your post my immediate suspicion was that a loose strand of connecting wire was vibrated into contact at certain frequencies/sound levels causing a short and shutdown. Then I read that this didn't happen during movies, so the strand of wire causation seems unlikely, although the connections should still be carefully redone.

I can assure you, however, that there's no general difficulty in driving the M22s with amplification even more modest than what you used. Years ago I tested my "3 ohm"(around 4000Hz) M22s with the 4064Hz track from a test CD and had no problem with extended play at that frequency at a higher than normal sound level. This reinforced the conclusions I'd drawn from a study of technical literature which indicated that concerns about low impedance were often grossly overdone.

I've had no problems with my M22s for 8 years now, and suggest that you're not likely to have any either.

Firstly, thanks to all for your respondes. And secondly I erred when I said that his is an Elite model, his is the VSX 917V and he corrected me that it shut down in both HT and stereo, -22 in stereo and -18 in HT...my bad!

Still, both of our AVR's are Pioneer and when you do the sound setup using the built in EQ the amp ramps up to "0" db for the duration of the test (about 5 minutes). This test emits various pink noise bursts and other sounds that the amp uses to adjust the settings all without incident. If a problem were to exist you'd think it would show up here!? Or, perhaps it is only sustained output that causes the shutdown...not sure.

I went over and rechecked all the connections. Even though the speaker connections couldn't have caused the issue (no loose strands, correct polarity and all were tight) I redid all the connections.

He has never had a problem with his current setup but said he usually never exceeds -30 anyway. That and the fact the M22's are much more clear at low volumes this should never be an issue should he get some.

As noted above, it's probably just an AVR fault. I have had my HT setup well past the 0 and into the +3 to +5 range without any problems (way too friggin loud though, LOL). I'll try them on my HT setup sometime before the 30 day trial is up to ensure this isn't a speaker issue just to be sure.